Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Analysis
1 Overview
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is an action stealth RPG developed by Eidos Montreal and released by Square Enix in August, 2016.
2 Formal Elements
2.1 Players
The player takes the role of Adam Jensen, a former police officer who has an augmented body. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided’s campaign is exclusively single-player and played from a first-person perspective, while the cover system switches into third-person view. Like many action games, the God of War series being a prime example, the player starts out with all abilities unlocked in a tutorial-like setting, but soon loses most of them in a plot event.
2.2 Objectives
The main objective of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided difficult to define. For most of the game, the player is concerned with figuring out who is behind the attack in the prologue and a second attack at the beginning of the main game. However, this leads the player on a series of what seem sometimes like wild goose chases. The player may attempt to accomplish these wild goose chases in whatever manner they choose: from ghost-like stealth utilizing environmental exploration, hacking and lock picking, systematic silent (deadly or not) enemy elimination, going in guns blazing, exploiting conversation trees, or almost any combination of the above.
2.3 Rules
Like many RPGs, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided features complex rule sets.
2.3.1 Gear
Gear has no skill or level limitations, but the player’s inventory space is extremely limited. Inventory is the classic Diablo style grid, with items taking up different amounts of slots. Ammo and healing items can be stacked, but weapons are none stackable. Weapons can be upgraded in several different ways, but the non-lethal weapons suffer a little in this regard. There are no wearable items, since upgrading Jensen’s augmented body takes the place of choosing armor and accessories.
2.3.2 NPC Interactions
Most NCPs in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided feature extremely limited interaction capabilities. At the lowest level, they have a bark or random piece of chatter that they will say if you try to talk to them. NPCs of slightly higher importance, such as shop keepers and quest related NPCs, have optional dialogue choices that reveal extra information, allow optional quests to be taken, or allow the player change the course a quest will take.
Theft is mostly ignored, but straying into enemy territory will result in assault and aggression from enemy NPCs if they detect you. Attacking non-hostile NPCs will also trigger a hostile response from gang members, police officers, or guards that are nearby.
2.3.3 Stats and Leveling
The player is rewarded with XP for many activities in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Find a hidden area? Get 200 XP. Hack a difficult computer? Get 100 XP. Did you do it one your first try? Get more XP. Do it illegally? Get XP for that. Take out a guard? Get XP. Do it with a headshot? Get more XP for that. Did you do it without the guard detecting you? More XP for that. Complete a mission? Get a bunch of XP. Do it without being spotted? Bonus XP.
2.3.4 Quests
There is a sequence of main quests the player must complete in order to finish the game, and the must be finished in a particular order. In between and concurrently, the player may attempt to complete side quests. The player is informed about some of these directly, but may choose to take action or ignore them. Others are discovered as the player explores the environment and interacts with NPCs.
2.3.5 Combat
Combat features the most complexity. Many of the player’s augs are combat oriented, such as increasing the amount of health, unlocking cloaking technology, unlocking a temporary full-body shield which makes the player impervious, dash abilities which may be used to ram opponents, abilities which eliminate all nearby enemies in one blow, and nano-blade technology which shoots a blade out of the player’s wrist. Supporting abilities like increasing radar radius and enemy tagging are also available.
Making use of these to navigate the environment in the way the player chooses presents an interesting challenge, as not all abilities will be equally useful for all play styles. Making the best use of them during the moment to moment decisions of combat provides a lot of the fun and engagement of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
If the player dies at any point, they will need to reload a save file.
2.4 Procedures
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided features several commonly engaged in procedures.
2.4.1 Talking to an NPC
Since Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is very heavily story driven, the player will spend quite a bit of time talking to NPCs. Depending on the player’s augmentation choices, they may be able to use CASIE, which allows the player to read the personality and emotional state data of the NPC as the conversation unfolds, letting the player make an informed decision about how to influence the NPC.
Several course altering dialogue choices also appear, influencing the direction the game will take.
2.4.2 Searching an Area & Scavenging
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided features tons of exploration possibilities. It is usual possible to shoot your way through something, there will almost always be a way around it if you observe the environment carefully. Going hand in hand with this, the player can find ammo, health items, energy items, new weapons, quest items, and personal secretaries that contain background information, codes to computers, codes to locked doors. Observation and thoroughness pay off.
2.4.3 Selling Loot
As mentioned before, inventory space is extremely limited, and if the player is attempting a non-lethal playthrough, it simple does not make sense to waste inventory space on lethal weapons, or their ammo.
2.4.4 Leveling Up
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided makes use of the static engine pattern.
Every 5000 XP points automatically gets converted into a ”Praxis” point. This can be used to upgrade to an aug. Two points are required to unlock a new aug, while a single point suffices to upgrade a previously unlocked one.
2.4.5 Managing Health Conditions
There are two main health conditions which the player needs to monitor during combat or stealth: health and energy. Both can be upgraded in several ways, from increasing the total amount available, to making them regenerate faster, to reducing the delay between lose of an amount and beginning regeneration. Health of course determines how much damage the player can receive before dying, while energy determines how much the player may use their augs, almost all of which cost energy to function.
2.5 Resources
These are the main resources in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
2.5.1 Tangible Resources
- Stimkit: Replenishes health.
- Biocell: Replenishes energy.
- Ammo: Comes in different varieties, regular, EMP, armor-piercing, etc.
- Grenades: Can be lethal or non-lethal.
- Weapons: Can be lethal or non-lethal.
- Hacking Software: Offer various abilities and powerups
2.5.2 Intangible Resources
- Health: If health drops to zero, the player dies.
- Energy: Used by augmentations. It recharges over time, but the more the player uses it without refilling it with a biocell, the less it recharges each time.
- XP: Received as described above.
- Credits: Credits are the form of money in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. They can be used to purchase ammo, weapons, health items, and even Praxis Kits.
2.6 Conflicts
2.6.1 NPCs
Jensen can interact with NPCs in friendly or confrontational ways, but obviously not both at the same time.
2.6.2 Stealth versus Guns-blazing
Stealth allows the player the pleasure of outwitting their opponents, while guns-blazing allows the pleasure of overpowering them, but they cannot be pursued simultaneously.
2.6.3 Lethal versus Non-lethal
There are diverse lethal ways to eliminate ones foes, and Eidos has expanded the repertoire of non-lethal means greatly.
2.6.4 Leveling
It is not possible to unlock all of Jensen’s augs in a single playthrough, and in the first playthrough the player will have to make a choice among using and permanently disabling certain augs.
2.7 Boundaries
2.7.1 Map
The maps of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided are usually quite large, and furthermore are featurally dense: that is, they have a lot of features in a small amount of space, forcing the player to filter through the extraneous details and find what really matters.
2.7.2 Leveling
As stated before, it is not possible to unlock all of Jensen’s augs in a single playthrough.
2.8 Outcomes
There appear to be several endings to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, reflecting the way the player navigates key dialogue choices.
3 Dynamic Elements
3.1 Patterns
This section focuses on game patterns as discussed by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans in Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design.
3.1.1 Static Engine
The leveling system contains the static engine pattern. Every 5000 XP points are turned into one Praxis Kit, without exception, no matter how many times the player levels up or has leveled up.
3.1.2 Playing Style Reinforcement
The leveling system also contains the playing style reinforcement pattern. As the player plays in a certain way (stealthy, or guns-blazing for instance), they will receive XP, which can be used to purchase augments through Praxis Kits. These augments, if wisely chosen, will allow the player to perform more of the actions which gave them XP in the first place. If a stealthy playstyle is being used, the player may choose to upgrade their cloaking abilities, which makes playing in a stealthy way easier and more likely.
3.1.3 Dynamic Friction
The energy and health meters will recharge automatically after a certain amount of time, but as this happens again and again, they recharge less of the total amount each time, until the player uses a biocell or stimpack to recharge them fully.
4 Dramatic Elements
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided features a story which follows the protagonist Adam Jensen in his job at Task Force 29, which involves hunting down terrorists.
4.1 Characters
Characters almost seems like too strong of a word. Characters, after all, should have character or depth, but little is to be found in the characters of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. They do seem to have rudimentary personalities, but these are not conveyed to the player strongly enough.
4.2 Story
Following a strange attack during a mission in Dubai, Adam Jensen is nearby when a bomb explodes at a train station in Prague, where TF 29 has its headquarters. The rest of the game sees Jensen try to unravel who is really responsible and what their motivation and true aims are. Although stated in this way, it seems like the standard plot of any thriller or spy movie, the game feels unfocused: is your boss the bad guy? Nope, turns out he was being used. How about the Augmented Rights Coalition (ARC)? Surely they must be the bad guys? Nope, turns out they are just being used as well. Who are the real bad guys? The Illuminati. No shit.
5 Conclusion
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided allows the player to explore or not, kill or not, hack or not: it short it allows the player to complete the game in the fashion they choose. It is a powerful and well-designed game, but the story fails to deliver and leaves the player far from satisfied.
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